Pentagon: Military mistakenly shipped live anthrax samples

WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday it is investigating what the Pentagon called an inadvertent shipment of live anthrax spores to government and commercial laboratories in as many as nine states, including Texas, that had expected to receive dead spores.

“At this time we do not suspect any risk to the general public,” CDC spokeswoman Kathy Harben said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, said the suspected live anthrax samples were shipped from Dugway Proving Ground, an Army post in Utah.

The government has confirmed one recipient, a laboratory in Maryland, received live spores. It is suspected, but not confirmed, that anthrax sent to labs in as many as eight other states also contained live spores, Warren said.

An anthrax sample from the same batch at Dugway also was sent to a U.S. military lab at Osan Air Base in South Korea. No one there has shown signs of exposure, Warren said, and the sample was destroyed.

“There is no known risk to the general public, and there are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection in potentially exposed lab workers,” Warren said.

A U.S. official said Wednesday that four people in three commercial labs had worked with the anthrax samples, and the CDC has recommended the four be provided post-exposure preventive treatment. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the details, and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

The anthrax samples were shipped from Dugway to government and commercial labs in Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.

The CDC is working with state and federal agencies on an investigation with the labs that received samples from the Defense Department, Harben of the CDC said, adding all samples involved in the investigation will be securely transferred to the CDC or other laboratories for tests.